Linguistic and Stylistic Changes in the Poetry of Ronny Somek: A Diachronic View

Abstract

The poetry of Ronny Somek—with its unique literary and linguistic nature—has earned respected literary status as well as popular appeal. In this study, I examine linguistic changes in Somek’s poetry with particular emphasis on syntax. For this purpose, two books of poetry were chosen to serve as research corpus: Golé  [Exile], his first book, published in 1976, and Kol kakh harbé elohim [So Much God], his most recent book, published in 2020. This study demonstrates that Ronny Somek’s language in the later period has undergone syntactic changes. The changes involve a new diversity in conjunctions whose usage has increased, especially time conjunctions, and special usages that diverge from standard Hebrew, such as biglal shé- and sha’a shé-, and real conditional im, used mostly as the conditional word for hypothetical conditionals instead of lu or ilu. Other syntactic changes in his late work are also apparent in using asyndetic structure. Further, there are other special language usages, such as syntactic agreement. However, the usage of complex tense denoting ongoing action happening over time was dropped in his late work.